To Be HumanA Journey
by Supercaptain
Summary: Leaving Town. Slash. General spoilers for Season 1-6. Clark/Lex. Takes place after Season 6 episode "Nemesis"


Title: To Be Human: A Journey

Author: SC182

Rating: PG

Genre: Post-Ep "Nemesis", Slash

Summary: Leaving town

Beta'd by theclexfactor

Spoilers: Seasons 1-6. General for the series.

_Days ago, I was buried alive. Trapped beneath rubble, I considered for the first time that I might actually die. I've been close before, but this time there was nothing stopping thisone from being the one that finally got me. I was alone, but __mostimportantly__, I was afraid. Then, my best friend who has hated me for more than a year saved me. That's when the world stopped making sense_.

It started out as an exercise, to find the direction of his life. A line divided the page, just as the headings polarized the orientation of his life. There was so much life. But then, there was also death, too much for a young life like his.

His parents, the true givers of his life and the cause of his exodus. His father. The brother or sister that was not to be. The town. Ryan. Alicia. Raya. So many gone because the weight of his world was too much for them to bear.

As Clark looked around the loft and saw it for the confining space that it was, he wondered how right Oliver was. The phantoms had landed on this world, not exactly in Smallville. Was it ironic to be lucky in his own misfortune by having the phantoms come to him? He knew it wouldn't always be like that.

The world was a big place. As Oliver had said, he couldn't depend on the problems coming to him. Then again, who said he would know how to deal with those problems anyway?

This wouldn't be running away, this would be an opportunity to better see the world and find hisself. Clark sighed, who was he kidding? He was removing those around him from danger. He was always best at saving them.

His mother was in Topeka, handling some crisis or another. Being a senator was perfect for her. It was one thing to know that his mother was smart; it was another to see her whipping and girding the state budget into shape and making headway for farmers all over the state. He loved his dad, but he doubted he had any real skills for being a Senator.

The hammock swung lazily, as he ceded control over to the early morning wind. The gentle sway was hypnotic and his mind wandered lazily to that whimsical land of what if. If Lex had won, would this contemplation be necessary?

The path between them had been diverging for a long time now. There was no fighting the feeling that things between them wouldn't be as shattered if Lana wasn't the fulcrum between them. The news never sleeps, but Chloe had to. This was prime sleeping time for her and knowing that allowed Clark to make his move. There was no way she'd answer her phone this early. Someone else might have called this a planned act of cowardice. Clark looked at it as keeping himself on target.

"Chlo, by the time you get this message…" He'd be out in the world with wide open eyes.

The reports in hand were growing to an already impressive headache. More millions, another facility, and another roadblock to his plan. It was the Green Arrow and his band of misguided merry men in bright colors.

He dropped the pictures of the foursome. One had been in his possession; it was only a matter of time for him to catch the rest and then they'd pay.

If his father weren't on a stint of reform, he'd find his planned acts of retribution new and inventive. "You're right, Dad. Know you're enemy, know your danger."

Then again, his wife was supposed to be his confidante. Yet, he knew before the shooting, before they were even married that Lana wasn't as faithful as he would have liked. At first, her actions had been about protecting him, then herself. Above all else, she protected Clark.

Clark was the constant variable in their relationship. Without him, their relationship didn't have the same foundation.

It vexes him that he still thinks about Clark everyday. In those moments when nothing is pressing. He can't even recall the last time he saw Clark, a small part of him is relieved, another part is just a bit perturbed.

He can hold on to these memories, golden preserved like the things in the old room.

He's holding it together. Lana seems better. But he can see the thinly veiled shades of suspicion in her eyes. It's crazy that they also remind him of Clark. He has it in his heart to love her for her, for all the things she can give him: honesty, love, children, devotion, her neediness. That is the very thing that he uses to his advantage.

For far too long, Lex has been the needy one. Maybe that's why things never worked with Clark, because he was independent—had too many secrets that he didn't want or need to share.

Lex loves Lana even more for the similarities; to see them without knowing, is to think that she and Clark are brother and sister. Like orchids in a field of wild flowers.

That thin line of tension finally explodes. She storms into this office furious. "Where is he?" She yells.

"Who?"

She scowls. "You know damned well who? You can't lie your way out of it this time?"

"When have I lied?" That's when the dam breaks and she lays all her cards on the table—her cards, his and some of Clark's.

T.S. Elliot was right, this is how it all ends with a whimper and silence and nothing else. She stopped yelling a while ago and left the office quietly.

He's been through at least twenty towns and has seen all the things that writers in America think they're capturing when writing about Americana. Clark supposes life is like this: sometimes idyllic and sometimes tragic, because that's the natural order of things.

There are rescues where lives are saved, people who never see his face, but are nonetheless grateful for what they believe is the intervention of the divine saving them. So many people suffer by chance, by circumstances that stretch the limits of his powers. Super strength and super speed aren't the cure alls for the natural ills of the world.

Clark tries to not think of the training his father had in mind for him. Jor-El occupies a space in mind much like the boogeyman or the Candyman. The absence of his adoptive father has taken on the eeriness of an urban legend that has the potential of being true and wholly devastating. Part of him wishes for parts of that education to make his journey more effective.

Then again, if his past encounters with Jor-El were any indication, he doesn't think much good could come for the people that he'd encounter if he was finally reprogrammed to his father's will.

Of all the things he and Lex have in common, he only realizes now that the megalomaniacal fathers would have oriented them on similar paths if they weren't so stubborn. Again, both of them think they're saving mankind.

Clark forces himself to stop thinking and just observe.

There was sunshine over head and the hot hard tread of a worn down gravel road under his feet.

Why was he doing it this way, he didn't know? This didn't even compare to all the toys and gadgets Oliver had at his disposal, then again, the things he could do easily made most of those toys obsolete.

Cool, obsolete toys that set the pace for globetrotting and rescues. Clark stopped at the edge of the road. He was lucky the shoes he left with were fairly new, the soles thick and durable ready for work on the farm or abroad.

Off the black top, the brownish-black Kansas dirt had somewhere along the way turned copper red. It was strange and lovely in its uniqueness. Another part of the world that Clark was in desperate need to understand. The road was long, desolate and quiet, with the same extending and unimpeded reach that Clark's life seemed to have. Around the road were trees, thick and high, giving the impression of sheer age and majesty of life on earth.

When he has doubts of his humanity, having to crane his head up to see the tips of trees is refreshing. "To be human." Clark says to no one in particular.

He likes imaging that the tips of the trees disappear into the clouds and nowhere here it actually, it's this innocence of mind that he tries to keep, despite all that he's seen, the world can be distilled down to this.

Lana left that morning. She's wearing her anger on the surface as she puts her bags in her car. She refused help and he offers none again at this moment. He'll give to her later whenever she might ask.

Anything she wants. The loss of the baby made her sad. Uncovering the truth that it was never real has wrought anger and scorn within her. He doesn't need to recall the saying that made Clytemnestra famous.

What she needs, he can't give. So, he lets her go.

There are no words exchanged between them, just a look heavier than all the rocks in the Smallville quarry.

Lex stepped into his office and shut the door quietly behind him. He dialed the phone on his desk, and listened to the constant ring. Lex refused to be aggravated by each passing second he had to wait. The anger had to be reeled in and Zen-like patience must be displayed.

"Son."

His father knew he'd been calling from the start. Nothing had really changed despite what Lionel had tried to show everyone else. "Hello, Dad. I think it's time for us to talk."

"I trust things at the old homestead are fine?" There's Lionel patented patience lining the voice on the other end of the phone. Lex couldn't be more convinced of his guilt until now.

"Fine as they can be, all things considered. Let me say this once, Dad. You are no longer welcomed in my life. If you should come near me or my soon to be ex-wife or anyone that I have ever associated with, then you'd find the consequences of your entanglement with the FBI to be a walk in the park." He smiled only briefly, and waited for no reply. "Have a good day."

Now, he can move on with his plans for progress and a step closer to finding the whereabouts of last remaining point of interest between he and Lionel, Clark.

In the first thirty days of his travels, he's witnessed scenes of joy: lives starting, births,

burgeoning life, smelled the fresh air of the country and that of the overly congested city, and in every place, he's found hope.

Clark starts to wonder if Smallville is an anomaly of sorts, like Sunnydale on _Buffy_ or Los Angeles on _Angel_. Maybe, his town is just a magnet for weird, and if it's isolated, it could be contained. When Clark remains ever optimistic, especially after a rescue and more so after thoughts about the old days with Lex, Cassandra's vision doesn't seem as potent.

He realizes the feeling is cyclic when a man he saves from a car crash doesn't make it. It's then that Clark feels Cassandra's hands, soft and smooth like jewel case velvet, touching his hands with phantom dexterity and forcing the image of a desolate graveyard in his head. There are already names on those empty headstones.

In the next thirty days, he saw plight, death, and destruction. He's seen anger soar like the midsummer temperatures. He's heard the sound of death. Clark wondered what the rest of the world could be like, if his own country known for its great civility seemed to be constantly on the edge of tottering back into a primal wildness.

It feels like he should be in control, stopping the madness before it gets out of hand. But how can he stop something that's always been there?

Voices flutter around in his head, popping up every so often like buoys to share wise advice and assess where he is in his journey.

He supposes it's loneliness.

But then again, he could always use advice. His dad, his mother, Chloe, Oliver, Lex.

It's always Lex that he thinks about last when the sky is solid black overhead and the alien equivalent of adrenaline stops being pumped in his veins.

Lex's voice has always been the one he heard when he was alone. After the events of the past year, Lex's voice had ceased to be anything other than a source of lies. Now after the cave-in, after Lex saved him when he figured he would have died down there, he scolds himself.

"I should have known better." The Scarecrow, finding Edge, the island—after all that Clark should have known that Lex wouldn't leave him so easily.

By watching other people, he's learning personal responsibility.

He's a historian to his own follies. Reckless, dangerous, even silly, they are his to claim. Lex would be proud that he's learning from history—his own, but nonetheless history.

Clark could be anywhere, because he has that uncanny ability to just materialize wherever he is least expected.

This task was personal. It required his touch, but to be caught would be far worse. So, this required the finesse of those willing to do anything to obtain supervisor approval. Lex would make his requests known, and wait like the scent of blood calling sharks to feed as his underlings, minions—employees set about to do his bidding.

Sometimes, it was great to be a Luthor, even when he was in his own desperate search for a Kent.

Clark was the glue, the underlying tension that made it all make sense. Sure, there was his father in the background with his powerplays and attempts to make him conform to his will of being a suitable heir, but Clark—he was the one that filled in the gaps in all his life experiences.

There was the connection of friendship, like a drug it enraptured him, and held him hostage. It was a foreign addiction that for a time seemed to be beneficial, but don't all addictions start that way? Then, it had been tainted, by his hand, by Clark's and his tolerance was no longer what it once was.

Love was a word he rarely employed. It was too easily manipulated to be worth having. Yet, it was there, buried in his chest and his brain, reserved for his mother, Pamela, Julian, and Clark. He realized it was love long after his anger and Clark got the best of him and made him into the man he was then.

As much as he hated depending on Clark, he did. First in faith, then his betrayal, and finally the waffling between both. Good or bad, he'd grown tolerant of Clark's constant presence, his absence of late, along with Lana's insistence that he had something to do with Clark's departure, was an unnecessary distraction.

In a little town in Oregon, Clark watches from a hilltop a mile away as an argument ends. He would have been grateful for a forest fire, a flood, or some equally disastrous natural disaster. It's always the human disasters that make him feel the most. Invulnerable skin has its advantages, but a body full of feeling and empathy is ravaged by understanding another's pain.

From his spot in the distance, he watches a woman walk out a front door slamming it with a harsh bang of finality, while the man chases after her stopping short on the porch. He watches her go silently while his face, his eyes, scream, cry out with gut wrenching anguish for her to return.

The things we never say make all the difference. Watching these two people being torn apart makes him realize you hurt the people you love the most.

Maybe, he should call his mother or Chloe.

It's best if he keeps Lex relegated to the safety of his mind. Lana made her choice when she walked down that aisle and said "I do."

Lana had herself and her baby to think about, just as he had the weight of this world and his long dead one to carry. With all the Lex has taught him about grayness, he's sure that Lex will love Lana and his son or daughter with all his heart.

Maybe things could have been different for the three of them, pleasant, even happy. Friends, best friends, always before lovers, before bitter feelings of mistrust and betrayal. Maybe, this happy little trio was not meant to be. The only place for its existence is that space that contains all the things were possible improbabilities, the should haves, the could haves, and all the things that will never be.

Clark turns away from the hill and tries to not think of how many conversations disintegrated down to the same thing over the past year. He doesn't need to watch the man's face anymore to know that he's seen it more times that he'd ever care to remember.

He's seen far more than he intended to see, splendor and calamity. This is only a small part of a world that he has yet to see.

Home is calling, if only for a little while.

The coming of dawn tickles his senses and draws Clark ever closer. The sign up ahead proclaims that he's now entering Kansas.

He crosses the county line and realizes like a thousand and one other lines he's passed over, it's all arbitrary. Yet, today is the day to come, if only for a little while. He walks down the road, feeling the familiar whispers of Kansas sunshine tickle his skin. The smell of corn is at its sweetest between the hours of night midnight and dawn.

The walk won't be that long, considering that he's seen this country from shore to shore. A visit to Loeb Bridge is just a short stroll away. The only question was whether he'd be there alone.

Today was an anniversary of sorts.

His schedule seems to be surprisingly light. As he checks his calendar, the date in the top corner of the box is familiar. It tickles his mind with the nagging insistency of something that's all too important to forget. Seven years ago today, he's crashed into the one person that had literally changed the direction of his life more times than a weathervane.

He takes a chance and returns to the fountain from which all the association of the last seven years sprang. It's a leap of faith—hope, he's more determined to think destiny.

Sentimentality of the day demands he drive a Porsche; it's not silver, but it reminds him of the only time he could fly that he can actually recall.

It's just his luck to see a familiar red jacket and its wearer leaning against the railing.

"I came to understand that there are fires, floods, disease, misfortune, sadness, pain, heartache….So many things out there to break a person's spirit. But, I've never seen their will broken, just like you Lex."

"Touching."

"Before me and after me, life has and will happen.

Lex placed his hands in his pockets, and smirked against the wind. "I never thought I'd hear you say that." He chuckles dryly, and it's the sound of uncoiling electricity. "The boy I once knew has become a man--" that he hardly recognized.

"All roads lead back to Smallville."

"Strangely enough, I'd have to agree with you."

Lex watches Clark gaze at the river and restrains his curiosity at seeing the blue green of the brackish waters reflected there. With the largest wall between them gone, he wonders where do they go.

As this day has shown, neither of them is capable of completely ridding himself of the other.

"I was wondering where we go from here."

Lex shrugs and quirks a brow at Clark, leans against the rail with the ease of a man that will be prepared despite the outcome. "I don't know."

"A truce maybe."

"I'm listening."

"I'm sorry."

"For?'

"Take that as an apology for everything that I've ever done to cause you pain. I realized…I realized so much when I was gone. Just because I can't save everyone doesn't mean I shouldn't try. I can't give up on you, Lex." Lex looks ready to refute Clark's claim.

"Neither can you give up on me. We can't change where we're headed, but we can work towards a common goal. "

"With some amendments, I presume?"

"Compromise. Negotiation, whatever you want to call it, Lex."

Lex nods silently. "In the situation like this, I don't believe a handshake is suitable. Something more memorable is in order."

They're strangely back to that eerie mind reading thing that made them click so early often. Clark takes the initiative and for once fails to think about the consequences or Lana, or fathers hellbent on controlling their sons. He just kisses Lex and relaxes a bit more as Lex leans into the kiss and responds with equal pressure.

"Welcome home."


End file.
